Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of shag carpet bomb Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 8:28 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org; lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Photographs of Workers
Ha! It took me a while to get the double meaning of the advert. I didn't know of that ad, but I was aware of the massive propaganda effort post-war b/c the government was terrified that GIs would come home to no jobs and fire up the kind of labor militancy seen during the GD. Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound is a classic read on the topic. She has also written about the foreign politics of popular culture in the 50s - the way the u.s. government fought its foreign policy debates through advertising, television, magazines, etc.
BTW, I mentioned this before but never got much of a response. For years I'd heard of the film, The Best Years of our Lives. After reading Sunset Park, which is about squatters in Brooklyn, one of whom is writing a dissertation on the film, I rented it. Wow. I was surprised at the centrality of anti-war criticism in a film that was so popular. I was aware that there's was plenty of antiwar sentiments throughout WWII -- there an archives on the web of jokes making fun of u.s. propaganda efforts, people actively mocking scrap drives, etc. - plus novels and short stories were coming off the press full of antiwar sentiments - as was the case for all wars fought in the u.s. Still, I was surprised that a very popular film was so critical and so close to the end of the war, especially since it's critical of the failure of the government to make sure there were jobs for people when they got back from the war.
If i'm remembering correctly, the film doesn't criticize by insisting that women should return to the kitchen.
Also, fascinating bit in there were a war critic complains that the u.s. fought against the wrong enemy which, of course, suggests that the criticism was more widely circulated than anyone mentions these days when we talk about the "Great War". Of course, IIRC, the critique thinks that we shouldn't have been fighting Hitler but the Commies.... But the interesting thing is, this bit of criticism is treated with disdain in the film: the anticommie propaganda isn't taken seriously.
Another interesting bit, given the cultural glorification of The Great War, the soldier who'd been wounded and received medals, disses them. Instead of being all heroic and proud, they are meaningless to them because they were handed out like k-rations. In other words, soliders at the time saw through the ploy of inflating the award of medals much as happens today, but which no one actually discusses much.
Which also reminds me of the scenes of early return, when they are all stuck in the bureaucratic rigamarole of discharge, where it becomes clear there is a clear resentment at the military for shitting on soldiers when they are no longer fighting and/or in the field.
Being intimately familiar with the way the military shits on people who leave - whether because of medical discharge, or deciding to quit after a couple of stints or even after serving for 20 years - I can see why there is a persistant fantasy that antiwar protesters spit on vets.
At 10:06 PM 6/26/2012, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Shag, are you familiar with the refrigerator ad from the war years with the
>caption "When my husband comes home I'm going to show him the door." Rosie
>the riveter should never be mentioned except in the same breath as the
woman
>in that ad. They both often appeared in the same issue of a magazine. One
>focused on immediate need, the other was preparation for the post-war
>expulsion of women from industrial jobs.
>
>Carrol
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
>On Behalf Of shag carpet bomb
>Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 7:56 PM
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Photographs of Workers
>
>
>the photos were commissioned by the u.s. government, a hold over from the
>public works program (WPA? was it?), part of the u.s propaganda effort.
>There's an original Rosie the Riveter who was photographed. I'm familiar
>with these because I created some blog decisions for a labor guy many years
>ago. We were going to use the labor photography of Earl Dotter, sprinkling
>in some of the LoC photos because Earl's photos, while stunning, weren't
>always the right aspect ratio for a blog.
>
>here's the original photo:
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rosie_the_Riveter_(Vultee)_DS.jpg>http:/
/
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rosie_the_Riveter_(Vultee)_DS.jpg
>
>
>the article at the library of congress was interesting:
><http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/journey/rosie.html>http://www.loc.gov/rr/pro
g
>ram/journey/rosie.html
>
>
>At 03:23 AM 6/26/2012, Ismail Lagardien wrote:
>
>
> >I would like to hear people's views on these technically marvelous
> >photographs. There is a great worker angle here.
> >
> >http://pavelkosenko.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/4x5-kodachromes/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Ismail Lagardien
> >
> >Nihil humani a me alienum puto
> >___________________________________
> >http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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